Uganda has the highest rate of unmet need for contraception in Africa, reports the Guardian UK, denying women the ability to avoid unintended pregnancy and to choose the number and timing of children they bear.

"Limited access to family planning services, fears about side
effects, opposition from partners and religious beliefs have led to
Uganda having the highest unmet need for contraception in east Africa," says the Guardian. Research indicates that this unmet need for family planning is
highest among illiterate women such as the HIV-positive mother of seven children who would like to avoid getting pregnant again.

commodity security coordinator at Uganda’s Ministry of Health, 41% of
women in Uganda have an unmet need for contraception. Rates in
neighbouring countries Kenya and Tanzania stand at 25% and 22%
respectively. Rwanda has a rate 38%, while Ethiopia’s is 34%.

Rates
keep increasing, but Muwonge says the ministry has not got enough
resources to tackle the problem. The government will need up to US$25m
to adequately meet the contraception needs of its population by 2015,
he added.

"Uganda’s contribution towards funding family planning
is negligible. It is less than 5%. Unless donors increase funding, it
might not be easy for the country to meet the unmet needs," Muwonge
warned at a health workshop for journalists in Kampala last month,
organised by the Uganda Health Communication Alliance (UHCA), with funding from the US-based Population Reference Bureau.

The case arose from a decision by President Barack
Obama to lift restraints on stem-cell research that were put in place
by President George W. Bush.

Nightlight Christian Adoptions
contended in a lawsuit that the government’s new guidelines will
decrease the number of human embryos available for adoption. U.S.
District Judge Royce Lamberth called that assertion speculative.
Donors, the judge said, still may choose to continue to store the
embryos or give them to an adoption agency rather than donate them for
research.

ACLU Kentucky responds to criticism of Courier-Journal Editorial

Criticisms of an editorial that appeared October 18th, 2009 in the Kentucky Courier-Journal supporting the recommendations of the recently released Guttmacher Institute report on global abortion trends prompted a response in defense of the editorial from the Director of the American Civil Liberties Union Reproductive Freedom Project in Louisville.

The Guttmacher study examined data on abortion trends worldwide, including the high rate of abortion and deaths among women from unsafe abortion. The original Courier-Journal editorial supported the Guttmacher recommendations of ensuring greater access to family planning services and contraceptive supplies to reduce unintended pregnancies, ensuring access to safe, legal abortion services, and ensuring access to post-abortion care. These steps, taken simultaneously, would reduce unintended pregnancies and hence the need for abortion, while also reducing deaths and illness among women from unsafe abortion.

Responding to criticisms of the Courier-Journal’s endorsement of these recommendations, Derek Selznick of the Louisville ACLU wrote:

[R]egardless of where we land on the political
spectrum, each of us has strong feelings about abortion. One thing we
can all agree on is that when 70,000 women die and 8 million women
suffer medical complications from unsafe abortions, something is wrong

The C-J agreed that the Guttmacher Institute’s three recommendations are common sense solutions to this problem.

All
three of these recommendations make sense and focus on what we should
do, which is make abortion less necessary, not more dangerous and
difficult. Now that is something we all should agree on.